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I have started this game several times over the last couple of years and one thing or another has pulled me away from it before I could finish it. That all changed recently when I decided to fill the gap before the new God of War released by playing Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider back to back. Today I'm here to talk about all of the ways Tomb Raider is amazing, and one way it isn't!

To start with the most basic element of any game, the core gameplay loop. In Tomb Raider you can break the game down into three main sections, exploring the world, raiding side tombs, and fighting enemies. Firstly the exploration of the world has struck a very good balance between a large, daunting, open world at the same time as providing enough incentive to go around a explore. This may just be because I have not been playing any games like this for quite a few months, but I was incredibly impressed with the freedom you have to climb around the world. There were very few occasions when I wanted to try and climb something and couldn't. The carrot on the end of the exploration stick is the looting of nuts and bolts that serve as the games currency and allows you to upgrade your weapons to have. This is on top of XP system that allows you to level up and earn any of the perks available to you at your current level. My only criticism of the perk system is that you are barred from unlocking the second tier of any of the three perk trees until you have reached a certain level. I would have preferred individual progression in each perk tree, on several occasions I was simply unlocking a perk in a tree I had no use for in order to get closer to unlocking the next set of perks I did want in the tree I wanted!

The second major part of Tomb Raider is the actual raiding of tombs, this is a far smaller part of the game that either I was expecting or the title indicates. Never the less there are seven optional tombs for you to raid as the game progresses, these vary from relatively simply to warranting a good head scratch and 15 minutes of your time to progress through. One issue of these side tombs is the rewards, they are usually rather underwhelming typically giving some nuts and bolts for weapon upgrading as well as a treasure map to the collectables in the local area.

The third part of the pie making up your time with Tomb Raider is combat. The main thing to note with the combat is that there are only 4 weapons in the game, however you can increase the capabilities of these weapons via two methods, firstly is increasing a specific facet of the weapon using nuts and bolts as I said before. The other method is finding 4 parts of a new weapon out in the environment by opening chests etc. once all four parts have been acquired then you get a whole new aesthetic to the weapon and all of the stats have been increased. I really like the feel of the combat in Tomb Raider, I played on the normal difficulty which meant that I could still take out all regular enemies with one head shot, either from a bow, pistol or rifle, the shotgun just deals a lot of damage generally. There isn't a vast variety of enemies in the game, the order in which you take your foes to their next life will more depend on their positioning, the AI governing them is decent and some will rush towards you with a shotgun while other will sit on high ground and rain arrows and grenades upon your head. My only criticism of the combat is that it felt to much like it was repeating time after time, for example after you have climbed some cliffs, explored for some loot, you would get a zone of the map that has a lot of enemies that you have to slowly make your way through. I would have liked more options in terms of being able to stealthy take out all the enemies, or in fact sneaking past the enemies all together. Many of the combat engagements involved starting with a small cutscene in which all the enemies saw you and started shooting at you, then the game would hand control back to you and you are left to carve your way through the area.

That covers all the fundamental points that comprise the game, I may have criticise several elements of the game, but I truly did love my time with the game. There are obvious comparisons drawn between Tomb Raider and the Uncharted series, my two penneth worth on the matter is that they are actually very different games. Though if I would have to say that the diversity of gameplay and different aspects that comprise the game lead me to conclude that I had more fun with Tomb Raider than I have with the Uncharted games, even if the visuals and to an extent the story, are superior in the Uncharted series.

The start of all recent years has heralded me promising to myself that this year I would finally and properly play and complete games from my backlog. It has become somewhat of a tradition for me to forget this promise to myself as soon as an "endless" game releases, such as Destiny or Overwatch, when there is no line in the sand of "okay I've finished this game time to move on". Without wanting to prematurely count my eggs I believe that 2018 is finally the year when I can haul some of that backlog out from the shadows and take their rightful place in my PS4 disk tray. So far in 2018 I have completed all three Bioshock games, Horizon Zero Dawn, both games in the Metro Redux, Tomb Raider(2013) and naturally Prey. So today I want to review Prey for you, preferably without creating a wall of text so daunting that no one reaches the bottom... let's see shall we!

I feel the start of the game is the best place to begin this review and I was mighty impressed by those first few hours. The world of Talos 1 as well as the introducing hour and a half blew me away. The gameplay freedom that was given to you from very early in the game left me with an intoxicating feeling that this was going to be a very special game to play. This feeling only grew in intensity during the first 4-5 hours of play, wherein the characters of Talos 1 and the story that led to where you stand was unveiled. This was made even better by an increasing number of weapons and gadgets to help you along your way and either give you fun side activities to focus on, such as scanning enemies for data, or increased the options you had in gameplay, such as a rip-off nerf gun that could distract enemies. It was sadly around the 6 hour mark that the wheels started to fall of the proverbial wagon for me, it boils down to two things, the fatigue set in with the repetition of the game and the annoyances of the game grew ten fold.

Firstly the fatigue, essentially this was caused by a lack of innovation in the game. It had very much levelled out and began to feel stale due to the fact that there were no longer interesting weapons or gadgets being introduced and the side quest system began to be so complex that I stopped doing them all together. This is where the annoyances really started to ware me down and the majority of my enjoyment of the game had dried up, suffice to say the last 2-3 hours of the game I was purely playing to see the story to its conclusion. The way the side quests are implemented into the game felt very confused to me, I genuinely don't know how the developers intended you to play them. In the traditional sense you would receive a side quest then go off and complete it between main missions. However this idea falls apart in Prey, because while there is a linear mission structure they very much run from one into another. This issue with side quests is brutally compounded by the fact that many of the steps in the side quests after the first few hours of the game, require you to advance to a part of Talos 1 that you haven't been too before, and often are unable to go to without advancing the main story. It boils down to the fact that I had about 11 side quests active that I was attempting to juggle, completing bits of them as I passed during the main story, but in many cases the side quests would then want you to abandon the main missions to return to a previous area, which I was unwilling to do as I was very uncommitted to them due to the confusing way they are presented to the player. The icing on the cake for the myriad of issues with how side quests are done in this game comes around half way through the game when you are give a choice that is obvious will radically change the way the game ends. I refuse to spoil anything, but suffice to say the option I was dead set on completing meant that my emotional attachment to any of the characters onboard Talos 1 was non-existent. I apologise if I confused you during that little rant of my, in all honesty it is very hard for me to explain all of the ways in which the side quests are so awfully implemented, and the knock on effect they have on the main missions.

A few final points, this game is quite naturally compared to Bioshock and I can completely agree with those comparisons. I believe the downfall of Prey is that it tries to take all of the elements of Bioshock and crank them up or introduce new versions of them, in some ways they succeed but sadly in all too many they fail. In a heartbeat I would recommend Bioshock over Prey, and completing Prey only made me more fond of the Bioshock series. Another point I would like to make is the enemies, the game's marketing was very much based around the mimics, which disguise themselves as everyday objects and the leap out and attack you. These enemies were absolutely incredible for the first few hours of the game, every room and corridor had an incredible tension to it as you try and spot any out of place objects that may be mimics. As the game progresses a perk can be unlocked that reveals disguised mimics, taking away any and all tension or horror element from the game, the quantity of mimics is also reduced drastically as their place is taken by a cast of increasingly hard to fight enemies. These new larger enemies are usually simply humanoid masses of black goop and are very unsatisfying to fight, any foes that differ from the humanoid have a various range of abilities that make it a challenge and an annoyance to fight them. The result of these changes over the course of the twelve hour game is that for the last several hours I simply ran past every enemy the story didn't require me to kill in order to save the little ammunition that I had.

In an effort to keep this review from stretching out into the horizon I shall end it here. The first half of the game was a fantastic and unravelling adventure, but the second half takes so much of the fun and mystery out of the game that I was incredibly glad for it to be over. If you are looking for a game with large levels and an obscene amount of player options, then I would be far more inclined to recommend either of the Dishonored game in place of Prey. I rate Prey: As always, thank you very much for reading. In the near future I will be reviewing some of the other games I have played recently that I listed at the top, I do hope you have enjoyed my review of Prey.

6/10

As always, thank you very much for reading. In the near future I will be reviewing some of the other games I have played recently that I listed at the top, I do hope you have enjoyed my review of Prey.EdTwitter

I've been toying with how to write this review for some time now, partly because I had so much hope that this game would succeed, I didn't know where to start talking about my sheer disappointment with it. I'm not one of those people who expected the world of the game, just loved the look of what the game was, and exploration game set in the biggest world ever known to a console gamer. I wasn't expecting features that were never shown or talked about, I wasn't expecting the hand crafted brilliance of a Naughty Dog game, nor the open world adventures that can be found in Bethesda's games. I just went in excited for the game, exactly as it had been shown before. Even then I couldn't have anticipated the level of disappointment that would slowly creep up on me during my 20 or so hours with the game.

I will admit that I did have one expectation going into the game, that I would be playing this for tens(dare I hope hundreds?) of hours to come, I never occurred to me that after merely 20 hours I would feel that I'd seen everything this game has to offer, and then some. Maybe I was just slow of the mark in seeing the game for what it is, tiny. You may feel like with over 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets that the game couldn't possibly be tiny, but I assure you it is. Within maybe a dozen hours I had found and bought my way to a maximum slot inventory and Multi-Tool, at the time I thought that would be the true start of my adventure! It turns out that it was as close to the end as I am ever like to get. I have earned and crafted all of the Multi-Tool and Inventory technologies that I want, my mining laser is so fast that even the largest of Crystals can be harvested with the smallest of taps of R2. So after as little as 12 hours every Multi-Tool station I saw was 100% redundant because it was a fact that I'd learned all the technologies. If you want to fly over the surface of a planet then you will see a wide variety of small bases set up by aliens(almost too many considering how largely empty these planets are of NPSs) but these rarely house more than a Multi-Tool upgrade, maybe it's an observatory you land at, well you're in luck as this will allow you to discover a Ruin which when located will teach you a new word for the aliens that inhabit that System. This is a problem in itself, the languages in this game have been designed in such a way that once you learn enough words(again something I have done in the time with the game) you don't really need to learn any more, at least to achieve what the languages set out to give you. I think they set out to allow you to gain new and desirable rewards from foreign alien races. In reality it doesn't take long for you to learn enough words to know exactly what the alien is seeking, then selecting the option feels empty, almost like I didn't really earn the right to speak with these unfathomable aliens.

At the end of the day I was hoping that No Man's Sky would be a game to look back on for years to come as the defining moment in procedural generation, the spotlight was undeniably squarely on the small UK development team forming Hello Games. This was going to be a game discussed for years to come, about the aliens you met, planets discovered, and space explored. Instead people will, for the large part, simply remember that game that had so much promise yet behind the curtain of development seemingly fell at every hurdle without letting on. I think this game will still cause debates, but not the ones everyone was expecting, there will be few discussions about the beauty and majesty of the game. In this place will be discussions of how everyone felt they had been mislead by a developer to the point that their game was arguably the most anticipated game so far of the generation.

It is a saddening, not enlightening, experience to fly from planet to planet, with little to no anticipation of what you will find on the next one after an all too short period of time. I know this review is both shorter and very different when compared to my other reviews, this is largely because I always like to focus on what I like, but also what I don't like whilst suggesting ways that these issues could be improved. However I find myself with this game in the very rare position of believing that this can't can't be tweaked to anywhere near perfection. It can maybe get a little less repetitive, but at its core this is just quite frankly not a good game. I feel there is a real debate to be had over the price point, and whether many people(myself included) would consider if such a failure if we had only paid £15-20 for it. This is a debate that I passionately want to have with you all so do check back soon for my thoughts on that. At the end of the day however, I am here to review the product in front of me, No Man's Sky is clearly a game that thinks its self a AAA game, but fall so far short in both quality and quantity that it is staggering. While I have been thinking about how to write this review, I have obviously also been considering what I will score it. So it is time to finish my review of No Man's Sky, not as an excited space explorer, but as a crestfallen gamer. I give No Man's Sky

5/10

Thank you very much for reading, I will be back soon with my thoughts on Battlefield 1!EdTwitter.

Assassin's Creed in the latest in a long line of open world sandbox games, how does this live up to its predecessors? I'm going to break this review down into sections, so it is easier for you to read the specific points you want to, we will have: The Open World, The Characters, The Combat, The Graphics and Performance, The Quality and Quantity of Content, then we will round out with The Verdict. So if you want a short synopsis of whether the game is good or not, check out the very last section. I would also like to say that there are no campaign spoilers in this review, however some of the concepts discussed and pictures below talk about some of the mechanics in the game.

The Open World

So first we will look at the open world that serves as our playground, and Victorian London is the backdrop to our adventures. This isn't what could be classed as an enormous map at our disposal, nor are the six available boroughs truly unique, with there being little noticeable difference between them. However the immersion of the map is very possibly the best in the series. When strolling, climbing or speeding my way through London, I feel like the whole City is industrial, like I can almost smell the pollution, feel the poverty or catch the trains.

Traversal through the City has been sped up due to carriages, trains and the new grapple hook, though sadly despite what I said in my initial impressions, that the free running had changed little from previous games. The more time I have spent with the game, the more I have come to the conclusion that your character goes where you don't want them too, or gets stuck on ledges, with a greater frequency than previous games. In my opinion this is something that critics and gamers alike have been complaining about for years, and not only has it not got better, now it feels to be getting worse! Many a time has my character frozen while climbing up a building, seemingly refusing to climb and further, until I let go of the analogue stick, press back up on the stick, and off the character goes. I am also sure this is not the game freezing as the rest of the world continues to carry on progressing in the back ground. My last comment on the open world, is that the architecture is very similar throughout the game world, I would have liked to seen greater diversity between the housing and warehouses, alas there is little change.

The Characters

Despite the previous section being a mixed bag of good and bad points, the characters in Syndicate are really, really good. Now with two protagonists in place of one, Evie and Jacob Frye take up the mantle left from previous games and they run with it. There is a clear, close relationship between the twins, and sometimes there is love and agreements, while other times there is irritation, however no matter the banter between the two of them, it is always a pleasure to see both of them on screen together. There is a reasonably good supporting cast as well, with the highlight being Alexander Graham Bell, he takes the traditional character, as with previous games, of the inventor for the twins. There are other famous faces sprinkled through out the game, but for the sake of a spoiler free review, I shall leave them unmentioned. Both Evie and Jacob have seperate skill trees, which must have skill points put into each one, though sadly both skill trees are identical, and already I have filled 75% of both their trees. While none of the perks totally change the way you will play as a character, they do finesse their individual play styles. There is also a sperate skill tree(which I won't name for spoilers but it is apparent once you gain access to it), which unlocks perks for both characters. There is one in particular which is a necessity, it is called Notoriety, and will make your visit in London, much more pleasant.

The Combat

The combat of Assassin's Creed has always been a factor of the game which has been good, but not amazing, this view of combat hasn't changed in Syndicate. Now there is a combo meter in the bottom left corner, and truly highlights how long combat can take. For example, there is a trophy for getting a 40x combo, I earned this on day 1, just from fighting a singular(though higher level than me) enemy, to put that another way, I had to press Square over 40 times, just to take down one enemy! I can't quite put my finger on what has changed, but I think it could be summed up as easily as the enemies have far too much health. I would like to say that you will come across enemies with that much health on very rare occasions, however it is not rare to see a foe that will increase your combo by 8-10 times. I feel like the combo meter has highlighted how much of the combat comes down to mashing buttons. Most of your time will be spend with your finger on the square button, with the semi-frequent press of circle to counter, X to break the foes defence, and occasionally triangle to dodge a bullet. Also customisation of combat(as with nearly all customisatoion) has left the franchise with Syndicate, unlike previous games, you can't buy unique weapons that make you have to play differently in battle, now there is a notable difference between Evie and Jacob, but little way to change the weapons of the individuals. For example Jacob will only be able to use knuckle dusters or daggers, while Evie can use her dagger cane or a dagger. Gone are the options to have swords, or halberds(the long axes), and I feel like this has lessened the variety of combat further!

The Graphics and Performance

The graphical prowess of this game is undeniable everywhere you go, there are amazing particle effects flowing from the rooftop chimneys, stunning shadows that can be seen in great detail from great distances, awesome character animations(most of the time), the list goes on. This is a truly beautiful game that rewards plaudits just for how it looks alone! The performance of the game doesn't let it down either, with a rock solid 30fps, which to my eye has never slowed down, I'm sure it has wavered a little, but I've never noticed it with my eye! All in all, this section is a huge success for Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and I can't wait to see what else Ubisoft can create on the Anvil engine!

The Quality and Quantity of Content

This is a tricky topic for Syndicate, on the one hand if you look at your map after even a few hours in the open world, you will see at least parts of it(you are lead to more areas as you progress) are absolutely littered with icons of things to do and see. However under closer inspection you will see that Ubisoft has stepped up their collectables game this year, with many of the icons being such. To some degree these are useful, with pressed flowers unlocking new colours for your characters, and music boxes which are said to unlock a mysterious crypt once all 30 are collected. I personally get the feeling that there are a few side quests that they have hidden behind the collection of many collectables, which I personally don't like. You can't go round a corner in Syndicate without running into another collectable, I find this "filling" quite annoying, as it makes the map look much more alive than it in actual fact is! In terms of the story missions, so far I haven't come across anything to break the bank, for the most part they are good, well designed missions. For the most part our old, most hated missions which usually involve following someone from afar, have stayed out of Syndicate, though I have come across one in a side mission. There seem to be a good number of side missions, and they form into more of a chain than in previous games. So your map won't be flooded with side quests, rather a small number of quests that are like mini campaigns. I like this move a lot as it feels like you are progressing even in the side content.

In terms of wandering around the world, there are a nice number of mini missions all over the place, these usually involve you weakening the Templars hold on that area, and can be taken on either with stealth in mind, or a guns blazing approach. If I had one criticism of the main campaign, is that it feel like the task of removing the Templars from London is a massive job, not in the nice way of "ohh look at all these activities to complete", more in the sense of "right let's go and kill this local leader, just like the previous half dozen".

I summary, there is plenty of content to keep you busy, most of it is to a good standard, though nothing tears the rule book to shreds, then there are some missions that feel like they are copy and pasted across the City to give you more things to have to do. So if you want to play the Campaign, you will have a good time, if you stray of the beaten track into the world, you may find yourself questioning if you have done this before, many times.

The Verdict

Okay guys, we have reached the precipice of this review! So in summary Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a very good game, but one which if it had received as little as 6 months more polish and refining, could have been a game to go down in history. As it is, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a game you should pick up straight away, if you have played previous Assassin's games, and have liked them. If not, there isn't enough new here to warrant you picking it up. Which brings me to my numerical score of:

"Be The Batman" so say the tag line for Batman Arkham Knight, the third and last instalment in the Batman series from Rocksteady, who are arguably the father of the superhero game. How does this epic conclusion stack up to the high bar set by its predecessors? Will it swoop to new found heights, or slump under the weight of expectation? Let's find out!

If you are new to the franchise or even a returning cowl toting veteran the same thrill of the chase will meet you the first time you open up your cape and feel the wind and the city beneath you. The prelude to this opening of the caped crusaders wings is a sorry one. Gotham citizens have been plunged into a frenzied panic as the main antagonist of this game, Scarecrow, threatens to release his fear toxin on the city. The ensuing campaign of terror from Scarecrow will test Batmans mental and physical skills to the limit and beyond! From the start of the game you know that Scarecrow has a very exact plan of how to bring Batman to his knees, and the thrill filled ride that constitutes this journey will stay with me for years to come.

It is clear that Rocksteady have learn the fine work of their craft even more since that last Batman instalment; Arkham City. This time around the game is filled with a wider array of challenges to overcome, and an arsenal that has suitable increased in size to meet this new found danger. Where Arkham City was filled with roles that were barely larger than cameos from many familiar faces from the Criminal Row that makes up the Batman Cannon. In Arkham Knight this has been refined, to the campaign which features several familiar faces, but doesn't hit you over the head with the thought that all of Gothams villains are against you. Fear not though, for these villains still make an appearance, this time confined to side quests through out the massive hulking shape of the Gotham Skyline.

The Batmobile is the most notable contribution to the series making an appearance in Arkham Knight for the first time as a fully drivable vehicle. I always liked the idea of the Batmobile being drivable around the streets of Gotham, and I trusted Rocksteady to pull this new found transportation off with aplomb. One thing I was not expecting to see released under the hood of the suitably menacing exterior of the Batmobile, was what can quite effectively be called a tank. When I took to the streets to fight drone tanks I was still a little spectacle as to whether it would work. This feeling was sadly not blown out of my head the first time I completed a tank battle, however my opinion of the new addition to combat, has slowly evolved over the course of the game. In the end I loved every second I spent in the tank iteration of the Batmobile.

However one of the only things that I think Rocksteady has done wrong with this game are the stealth sections with the Batmobile. Fights taking place against much stronger tanks feel irritating to start with, and this feeling sadly is never shaken. These segments of the game, have you in the Batmobile having to sneak up behind these armoured tanks, aptly named Cobra Tanks, and waiting a few second for your weapons to lock onto the conveniently placed weak spot on the rear of the tank and exploiting this at the expense of the tanks integrity. To start with you are only faced with a small number of Cobra Tanks, one or two to start with, but rather than introducing a new mechanic to these fights, you are instead faced with a growing number of these enemies to best before you can carry on. It is at a discord with the whole game which feels immensely polished and thought though, however these fights feel like a very cheap way of wasting the players time. However it is a mild annoyance compared to the game at large, so I shall speak no more off it.

There are two main themes throughout the medium length campaign which has you taking up the mantle of the Dark Knight one last time. They are Scarecrow, who I mentioned earlier, and the titles name sake the Arkham Knight. Both of these formidable foes are the backbone of the story, and keep the pacing and intrigue at the perfect levels. From the start of the game the Arkham Knight clearly has a very strong vendetta against Batman, though the man under the mask never shows his face. I was totally enraptured by theories of who was under the mask, and though I obviously won't spoil the identity, rest assured I think the reveal is one of the best moments of the game. I say one of the best moments because the Arkham Knight is littered with these amazing, stand out moments that you will remember for years to come! There is a specific mission in the second half of the game, which really throws out the rule book for third person games, and is certainly a segment that I can't wait to play again in the New Game + option given to you after you have completed to game.

Dual Play, is another feature that is making a franchise entry with the Arkham Knight, letting you play either as Batman or three of his companions at specific points in the campaign and side quests. Simply by pressing R1 you take control of the other vigilante and continue to rack up your combo multiplayer. I was sceptical about this addition when it was first announced, thinking that it would get in the way of me progressing at my own pace. However I am very happy to say that it has been implemented perfectly. These occurrences are only on the rarest of occasions, with only two or three such segments appearing in the campaign. This co-operation is never implemented in predator sections, so you can be as slow and stealthy as you like in those encounters. When you rack up a high enough multiplier with either or both characters you can unleash a lethal take down on one unwitting adversary. I enjoy these titbits of co-operation far more than I thought I would, and even wish there were more encounters that utilised dual play, my ultimate goal would be for dual play to be usable during free roam in the main city. Sadly this option is not given to us, maybe for good reason, as traversal might be difficult whilst playing as another character!

Batman goes by many names through out the comics, games and films, and people calling him a detective are not lying. There are more elements to make you feel involved with the investigations than ever before. With truly memorable tasks that are both fun to work out, and rewarding once you have! I must also mention the second of two problems I have with the game. The first as mentioned above is to do with Cobra Tanks, but my second is the boss fights in this game, Rocksteady have never been able to concoct a good boss fight. I obviously won't detail any of these encounters, but let's just say that they live up to the expectation of Rocksteady boss fights. This is a shame because all other elements have been refined by the team over the last few years since Arkham City was released, so it would have been nice to see an improvement in the boss fights.

Batman Arkham Knight is a game that I shall neither forget nor stop playing any time soon. It has raised the bar for both superhero games and third person games in general. I would be sad that this is the last Batman game bursting its way out of Rocksteadys doors(and I believe it is), but I'm okay with this. They have put to bed one of my favourite gaming series of all time, and simultaneously left me wanting what ever game to be released from Rocksteady.

Truly a game for the history books, combining all of my thoughts onto the game, I give you my final score!

A hearty hello to each and every one of you out there in the ether reading this post, Today I will be giving you all my views of Trials Fusion for your enjoyment! Without another beat of the proverbial bush let's get straight into it. This was the first Trials game I have played, going into the first level I was cautiously excited, that caution was put to the wind as soon as I caught my first huge jump(a mere 10 seconds into the track!). As the hours of game time flew past me I never stopped to think, what will happen when the game ends? Well luckily for me it never will, if you didn't already know Trials Fusion boasts the deepest user creation tools I have seen in any game I have played. The developers have even given us the lofty expectation that all of the game could be made in the level creator. As soon as you take your first steps into the level creation you will see that it wasn't an understatement, the tools you have at your finger tips would make even the hardiest of gamers weep at the thought of the possibility's. That being said, the creator does have some down sides, firstly it isn't all that user friendly, or it gives of that impression until you start getting to grips with it, then it is considerably more manageable! The other down side to the creation tools, is the way in which they can be overloaded. This won't be a large problem for most people, but yesterday I started a new track and somewhat spammed the lighting effects. In my head it would have been somewhere between the scope of Game of Thrones and the lighting effects of a neon planet! Now you have that magnificent image in your head, lets take a look at the final product:

For the sake of clarification all of those green and orange flames should be constantly on, but due to how many of them there are the game can't keep them all going, thus they all flicker inconsistently! However if your interest will largely stay within the bracket of the "campaign" then you are in for a treat, each track has 3 medals and 3 challenges to complete. If you think that sounds easy then you are sadly mistaken, the challenges range from hard to harder. Also a nice handful of the challenges are very cryptic, such as Win a game of tennis. You might think, how do you play a game of tennis in a motorbiking game? Spoilers, that why! All of the medals and challenges give you XP, which will contribute to your level, which in turn will slowly unlock new outfits for your biker. Over all the amount of content in this game is staggering. At the time of writing this review there are just over 4,000 track made by you the gaming community. I am pretty sure however that the tracks you upload are locked to that console, so you can't play a track which has been uploaded from the Xbox One on the PS4! Seeing as the game has only been out less than 2 weeks the quality of some of the tracks is quite astonishing and I can't wait to see the direction the community will take! Alas the game is not perfect and it does have a couple of flaws, the largest in my opinion is the voice overs, they themselves are actually really good, but the line of dialogue they are saying will be cut if you have to restart back to the last checkpoint. You will then never hear that line of dialogue again unless you play the track again. So that means that what story there is in the game was largely lost on me because so much of what they were saying was cut. I would have liked to see either the ability to replay the voice overs from the pause menu or the voices continue no matter how many times you restart. If you were wondering, none of what the voice overs say specifically ties into that part of the track. My other gripe with the game is the check points, now they themselves have been placed just frequently enough to stop you pulling your hair out, but far enough away to feel like you have achieved something when you get to one. No it isn't that, my problem is momentum, an irritating number of the jumps are much, much harder to achieve when you retry and then have no momentum behind you. I don't know whether to some people this adds to the challenge of the tracks, but for me I find it quite irritating! There you go, they are all of my opinions of Trials Fusion, all in all it is a brilliant game which I wouldn't hesitate to recommend you buy. Now time for the score!

Tracks: All superbly crafted, make replayability an extreme pleasure! 10/10Graphics: Looks really good, but you are mainly focusing of the bike so everything else doesn't matter! 10/10Challenge: Just the right amount of challenge to keep you coming back! 10/10Gripes: Cut out voice overs and momentum problems! 5/10Enjoyability: An extremely enjoyable game that will keep me coming back for a very long time! 10/10Which brings me to the grand total of : 9.0/10

I hope you enjoyed my review of Trials Fusion, and I hope it made you want to play this biking masterpiece.Signing out, but not for long.Ed

Hi guys, Just before I start this post I would just like to say that this is my 99th post on this blog. Within the next week you can expect my 100th post. The 100th post is going to be huge, it will change the whole format of my blog and I am really excited to bring it to you all. I have been working behind the scenes on this project for a few months now so it will be very nice to finally see it released. If you follow me on Twitter then you will have seen some tweets in-directly about it. That is the only hint you will get! Right after that intro I have an equally awesome post for you, my full review of the Playstation 4. Now this will be the first console I have reviewed so I hope I cover all of the relevant points. DESIGN: Let's start with the design of the console, this console is a really stunner, if there was a bar where all of the games consoles hung out, when the PS4 enters the room she(I have given my PS4 a girls name, as should you!) would turn many heads. Moving on from that slightly weird analogy, seriously though she does look gorgeous, if you are a hermit at haven't seen what the PS4 looks like here she is:

CONTROLLER: That is the other major change with the PS4 the Dualshock 4, I can't stress enough how bigger difference you can feel just by holding the controller. When I first picked up the controller back in September at Eurogamer, I wasn't particularly infatuated with it and that gave me cause for concern. However as soon as I picked it up with my own PS4 I just fell in love with it, I think the first thing that will hit you is the size of it. This is considerably bigger than the Dualshock 3, and I personally think it is better because of it! It will take you a while to get used to it, but when you do it is simply a joy to use. As you may know the start and select buttons from the Dualshock 3 have been replaced with the options and share buttons, and touch pad. As it sounds the share does nothing but takes screen shots/videos. The options and touch pad are the new start and select, with the touch pad usually taking the place of select and the options button taking the place of start. In the future I would like to see more games take more advantage of the touch pad. I can see it being a feature that will mainly be used in first party games. I know for a fact that there are sections of inFamous Second Sons that will feature the touch pad, I can't wait to see what Naughty Dog can do with it! All in all I think it is one of if not the biggest improvement between Dualshock 3 and 4!GRAPHICAL CAPABILITY: The difference between the PS3 and 4 graphically is staggering, if you look at a game like Battlefield 4(single player) and then you look at something like Uncharted 3, the difference is huge. Now I know you want a difference that big, but this is just the beginning of the consoles life span, the graphics/size of games is only grow the longer the console is out there! Lip syncing has also been greatly improved between the generations, I know it is some what down to the game engine/developer but the console itself gives them the opportunity to do so much more than they could before.Most of the games you will play with be 1080p and 60fps, if you don't know what that means, it is going to look gorgeous and run very very smoothly! THE BAD THINGS WITH THE CONSOLE: Yes it is a shame that a few things are done wrong with this console, but non of them are huge and shouldn't get in the way of your day-to-day gaming experience. The first thing is actually the share button, when you take a screen shot(by pressing the share button once depending on what you have set it to in the settings) it will take a screen shot. When ever you want to upload that screen shot, you press and hold the share button and it gives you the option to either tweet the shot, or post it on Facebook. I would have really liked to see an option where by you can email it to yourself or others. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you can only access your photos through the PS4, not through the Playstation website or something like that, I feel it was a big missed opportunity with the PS4. My second problem with the PS4 is the downloads system, when ever something is automatically downloaded or you start something downloading, you have no ability what so ever to pause that download. This may not be a huge problem for many people but for me with a 1.8mb/s Internet speed any kind of download in the background means that I then can't play any multiplayer games. This is a huge pain especially as games for the PS4(Warframe for example is 50GB) are so big. This brings me onto my third problem with the PS4, the memory. Now I know that in time there will be much bigger options available for the PS4, but to only have one 500GB(the size that was available on the PS3 at the end of it's life cycle) option at launch I feel was a wasted opportunity. I have already filled half of my hard drive with 4 disk games and 3 digital games. I have no films and no media other than the screen shots that I have taken. My fourth and final problem is the on/off button. For some reason I can't make my PS4 turn of just my pressing the off button(or pressing and holding), which puts it into standby mode, but I want to turn my PS4 totally off. So instead of actually using the power button I have to go through the menus of the PS4(which sounds worse than it is)to turn my PS4 off. This isn't a huge thing but it is a bit annoying. Anyway that brings me to the end of my review for the PS4 as a whole, if there are any points you think I have missed you can either leave your ideas in the comments or Tweet me or hit me up on Facebook. All in all I absolutely love the PS4, and the bad things I have mentioned have little to no impact on your day-to-day gaming, they just would have been nice to see. I feel as though it wouldn't be right to give a whole console a score, so I will leave you with this. No matter what your console preferences you should definitely pick up a next(now current?) gen console. They are a master piece in gaming design and I am very very excited to see what this next year will bring us. If you are a gamer, you had better strap yourself in because what is to come, will be know for years to come, as the best time to be a gamer.As always thank you for reading,EdTwitter

Hi guys, Armageddon, that is the word that fuels Resogun, this is a game like no other I have played(bear in mind I never played any of the super stardust games) and I personally think it is brilliant. If you are unaware of the concept of Resogun, you are put in a small space ship that is tasked with saving the last humans. You can move up, down, left and right and shoot left and right but not up and down. That is it really, Resogun is one of those games where you have to play it to know what everyone is talking about. In any one level there are 10 humans to save, space ships called keepers come down from the top of the level and you have to shoot them all in order to release one of the humans from their cages. With me so far? I know it is quite complicated and the lack of any tutorials is a bit annoying for the first level, but after that you will know what to do well enough. The more enemy ships you defeat the higher you combo will get, the higher your difficulty the higher you combo can go, but also the faster your combo will disappear.

As far as the health of your space ship goes, well it has none, you can only take one hit from anything and you will die. Thankfully you get 3 lives per level, but rest assured you will be hard pressed every time you raise the difficulty. In terms of content in the game, at first there appears to be very little(you will beat all the levels in a few hours) but then you through in the difficulty option and the constant need to beat your/your friends high score and you have a game that you can play for a very long time. Resogun is currently free with Playstation +(which is required to play online on the PS4) so you have no reason not to play this game. Be warned though it will suck you in to its addictive levels and make you want to play it for hours on end!Time for the scores!Length: If you only want to play it once it will only take you 2 hours but it is very fun and it is only a PSN game. 7/10Graphics: Not particularly noticeable but very smooth on the eye. 8/10Multiplayer: Just multiplayer versions of all of the normal levels. 8/10Sound: Satisfying as there is rarely a quite moment. 8/10Gameplay: Really brilliant gameplay and is just a very fun game to play! 9/10 That gives us a total score of 8/10 a game I definitely recommend you play especially as it is currently free!Thanks for reading,EdTwitter